Narla Dean Somatic and Relational Therapist

YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH DISCOMFORT IS YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH GROWTH

"Your relationship with discomfort is your relationship with growth. And your relationship with discomfort is most honestly revealed inside your relationships with others."

Your Relationship With Discomfort Is Your Relationship With Growth And your relationship with discomfort is most honestly revealed inside your relationships with others.You can think you've done the work. You can have years of therapy behind you, a somatic practice, a journalling ritual, a whole interior landscape you've tended carefully. And then someone you love....

FEEL YOUR FEELING THEY SAY

As if you know how.
As if it's that simple.
As if anyone ever taught you.

Here's what I want you to know, most people don't avoid their feelings out of weakness. They avoid them because nobody ever showed them how to go there safely. And the nervous system, brilliant as it is, learned early that certain feelings were too big, too much, too unwelcome.

So it did what it was designed to do.
It protected you.

That protection made sense then.
It may not be serving you now.

Feeling your feelings isn't a something you have the ability to you or don't.
It's a skill, a capacity, an allowing.
One that can be learned, slowly, with the right conditions and enough safety.

And the body is where we start.
Not in the mind.
Not in the story you've been telling about why you feel the way you do, or who caused it, or whether it's valid.
It's in the body.

Because the feelings that never got to move, that got shut down mid-breath or swallowed before they could surface, they didn't disappear. They went somewhere.
Your chest, your throat, your jaw, your stomach.

And simply, they've just been waiting there, patient and persistent, for someone to finally come and sit with them.

And honey, that someone is you.

This is what somatic work actually is, underneath all the language we use to describe it. It's learning to turn toward yourself.

It's going inside, and listening, noticing.
It's placing your hands on your body, and feeling for sensation to arise.
Sometimes it's asking, honestly and slowly.
"Where is the past still alive in me right now?" And then to wait.
And not to fix, or resolve, but to be with.

Because feelings don't need to be solved.
They need to be met.
When we meet a feeling with presence instead of resistance, something shifts.

That tight place in the chest softens.
The held breath releases.
The jaw softens.
That crunchy bit next to you heart loosens.
The part of you that has been bracing for years gets to, even briefly, let go.

This is how we feel.
Well, it's one of the ways.

This is you showing up for yourself.
Mind and body, in the same room, maybe for the first time in a long time.

You don't need to be in crisis for it to be useful.
You just need to be human.

And if you want support learning how to do this more deeply, in a space that's held and relational and safe, that's exactly what I'm here for.

Work with me at www.narladean.com

With love,
Narla

CAPACITY IS NOT OBLIGATION

Just because you are capable of loving that much, does not mean you always need to.

Capacity is not obligation.

The depth of what you can feel, what you can hold, what you can offer, does not mean it is always wise or right to offer all of it. Some relationships are not vessels that can receive what you carry. And pouring yourself into something that cannot hold you is not love. It is loss.

This is a common dynamic.

You become the endless source. They remain the bottomless well. And no matter how much you give, it will never be enough, because they were never willing to meet that evolution of relating in the first place.

Discernment is not distance.

It is knowing where your love is actually met, received, and returned. It is choosing to align with people whose values and needs can genuinely meet your own.

This takes great courage.
Because this pattern often runs so deep, back to your earliest years, back to what you learned love looked like before you had any say in the matter. Breaking it means reaching toward something more, something unfamiliar, something you may not even be sure exists yet.

Trust me, it does.
And this, leap, it is hard, and it is absolutely worth it.

I am here for it.

If this resonates, reach out www.narldean.com.

With love,
Narla

Why We Can't Move On

Common threads from sessions this week.
"We don't only grieve good things. We grieve the hope that was inside a hard thing."

Why we can't move on I heard a version of the same thing from several people in my session room this week. Different stories, different relationships, different losses. But the same thread running through all of them: why can't I just move through this faster?Grief, transition, the end of something that mattered. We wan...

The Cost of Not Feeling.

'Everything we want to grow, in ourselves and in our relationships, lives on the other side of the thing we are afraid to feel.'

The Cost of Not Feeling We are very good at not feeling. We suppress. We avoid. We stay busy, stay numb, stay anywhere but inside the thing that is trying to surface. We reach for the phone before our feet have even hit the floor. We pour the wine before we’ve taken our coat off. We fill every quiet moment before it has ...

What Open Relating Actually Asks of You.

On freedom, self-knowledge, and the inner work no one warns you about.

What Open Relating Actually Asks of You On freedom, self-knowledge, and the inner work no one warns you about.Open relating sounds like freedom.More love. More connection. More possibility. The idea that you don't have to choose, that love doesn't have to be scarce, that the heart has room for more than one. This is the version that draws...

AFTER A BREAK UP - A GENTLE GUIDE.

For the hard in-between time.
If this resonates, reach out.

After a Breakup - A Gentle Guide Something ends. And life, somewhat rudely, keeps going. The inbox still fills, the kids still need lunch, the assignments still have due dates and work is piling up. There's this impossible tension of grief sitting right next to the ordinary demands of being human, and nobody really tells you how to...

THANK YOU TASTE OF LOVE, ONCE AGAIN. ❤️

Returning from a weekend away for Taste of Love, Sydney.

It was one of those weekends that fills something deep, and much needed.

Taste of Love Sydney, was sweet, rich, connective and beautiful. T'was the kind of gathering to that allowed you to be and celebrate all you are.

I offered a taster workshop on my program, Relating, Me Before We. Which had the participants sit with the question of self. Who you are when you are centered, grounded, safe. And then what happens when connection enters the room.

Finding where I end and you begin and meeting in the in-between space.

Noting the wobbling, the adjusting and all the micro ways we can lose the thread of ourselves when we come into closeness with another.

It's tender territory. And the room felt it all.

I also got to offer a talk on Open Relating as a personal development path. And honestly, that one filled my cup in ways I'm still feeling, I really feel so alive when I'm discussing and sharing my path through this territory, I feel my wealth of knowledge and my passion fully.

And woven through all of it was being there with my partner, Dabaco. Teaching on relating while being witnessed in our relationship. Present, playful, alive, tender with and to each other, was a real gift.

I'm grateful.
For the work, for the people that showed up, and for the love that makes it all mean something.

Aaaaand, the trees and beautiful land we gathered on.

Big love ✨❤️🙌

Until next time.... A few months away at Taste of Love, Melbourne ❤️

With love,
Narla

Taste of Love Ta**ra Festival Sydney
Ta**ra Festival & Retreat🌹❤️

EVERY COUPLE ARGUES, THAT PART ISN'T THE PROBLEM.

Words open the door. Behaviour is what walks through it.

Every couple argues. That part isn't the problem. It's what happens in the aftermath that tells you something true about a relationship.Repair isn't a perfectly worded apology. It's not flowers or a long text sent at midnight. Those things can matter, but they're not repair. Not really.Repair is the congruence. It's what you do lining up with what....

Afraid to Lose You. Afraid to Lose Myself.

What it means to be with another person without losing the thread back to yourself. Not a version of yourself shaped entirely by their proximity.

https://www.tasteoflovesydney.com/

https://www.narladean.com/post/afraid-to-lose-you-afraid-to-lose-myself

Afraid to Lose You. Afraid to Lose Myself. There's always one person afraid of losing the other, and one afraid of losing themselves.That tension lives in the body before it ever becomes a conversation. It shows up as a hand that reaches a little too often, or a chest that quietly closes when someone gets too close. We don't always know whic...

AWARENESS, BUT WHAT THEN? (This is such a good one!)

'The awareness is always the beginning. But it was never meant to be the whole story.

If it resonates, reach out.

With love,
Narla.

Awareness, but what then? The awareness is always the beginning. But it was never meant to be the whole story.I've found myself walking through the same process with a few different clients this week. Not because I planned it, but because it kept being what was needed. So I thought I'd write it down.A lot of therapy lives in...